The present invention relates to a radio paging receiver with a message display function. More particularly, the present invention relates to a radio paging receiver with a message display function that allows a user to choose any one of a plurality of messages with one or more characters of a predetermined language or languages including, for example, kanji, katakana, hiragana, and alphanumeric letters of the same or different sizes.
An example of a conventional radio paging receiver with a message display function is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-19022. One feature of the radio paging receiver lies in easy-to-read displaying of a reception message on a smaller display panel. When the characters are too small for a user to read, the radio paging receiver magnifies each character of the reception message in response to simultaneous depression of a light switch and a scroll switch. The user may just depress the switches when he or she wants to magnify the difficult-to-read characters. However, only some of the first characters are displayed on due to the dimensional limitation of the display panel. The remaining portion of the reception message may be displayed on when the user depresses the scroll switch. The scroll switch should be depressed continuously until the end of the reception message appears to display the entire message. The magnified characters are returned to their original size in response to the re-depression of the light switch and the scroll switch at the same time. In the above-mentioned radio paging receiver with the message display function, the characters of the only one reception message at a time can be magnified for the clear appearance.
Typical radio paging receivers with a message display function of this type can display a reception message with a combination of kanji, katakana, hiragana, alphanumeric letters or those of other languages of different sizes.
The radio paging receiver may comprise a memory unit for storing two or more reception message. However, the small dimension of the display panel is a limitation to a display capacity, i.e., the number of messages that can be displayed on the panel at the same time. To display more messages than the capacity, the reception messages to be displayed should be selected and retrieved from the memory unit one by one, which is relatively bothersome or troublesome.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a radio paging receiver with a message display function that allows simultaneous displaying of two or more reception messages, a desired one of which can be selected and magnified with a simple operation.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a radio paging receiver with a message display function that provides rapid selection of a reception message with a combination of, for example, kanji, katakana, hiragana, alphanumeric letters or those of other languages of the different sizes, or with a combination of characters of one language, and provides displaying of the characters of the selected reception message in a different font from the remaining set of the reception messages.
A radio paging receiver with a message display function according to the present invention can display and memorize two or more reception messages. The radio paging receiver with a message display function comprises a message control unit. The message control unit includes first and second character tables and a message memory for memorizing messages. The first and second character tables are for displaying the messages with first and second character types, respectively. The messages stored in the message memory are displayed on the display window in either one of a multiple message display mode or a single message display mode. The message control unit displays the messages with the characters of either the first or second character type when the multiple message display mode is selected. When the single message display mode is selected, then only one of the messages is displayed on the display window with the characters of the other of the first or second character type.